BRIAN THORSETT, TENOR - RICHARD MASTERS, PIANO
Squires Recital Salon - Monday, March 17, 2025 - 8pm
Gioite al canto mio (L'Euridice) - Jacopo Peri (1561-1633)
Tre giorni son che Nina - Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736)
My Love's an Arbutus - arr. Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)
To Mary - Maude Valerie White (1855-1937)
Silent Noon - Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Mother o' Mine - Frank Tours (1877-1963)
Panis Angelicus (from Mass, op. 12) - César Franck (1822-1890)
When Night Descends - Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Lolita - Arturo Buzzi-Peccia (1854-1943)
Die Mainacht, op. 43 no. 2 - Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Walther's Prize Song (Die Meistersingers) - Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
INTERMISSION
I Hear You Calling Me - Charles Marshall (1857-1927)
The Low-Backed Car - Samuel Lover (1797-1868)
Molly Brannigan - arr. Villiers Stanford
She moved thro' the fair - arr. Herbert Hughes (1882-1937)
The Garden Where the Praties Grow - Samuel Liddle (1867-1951)
The Foggy Dew - arr. Charlotte Milligan Fox (1864-1914)
Mother Machree - Chauncey Olcott and Ernest R. Ball
Kitty, me love, will you marry me? - arr. Herbert Hughes
Smilin' Through - Arthur A. Penn (1875-1941)
Ireland, Mother Ireland - Raymond Loughborough (1882-1967)
At age 19, young John McCormack, from humble beginnings in poverty-stricken Athlone, Ireland, was destined for a career in the civil service. His fate changed when he entered the Feis Ceoil singing contest and was awarded first prize. The next year he attended a Covent Garden performance of La Bohême featuring the great Enrico Caruso; the great Italian tenor's performance spurred the young Irishman to seek training in Milan, Italy. McCormack experienced a meteoric rise in the operatic world, but his discomfort with acting soon convinced the tenor that that his real artistic calling was on the recital stage. McCormack soon began attracting enormous audiences and commanding impressive fees. On the concert platform he combined classical arias and art songs with popular ballads and Irish folk songs, and as a result found audiences both among lovers of classical and popular music. The flourishing of broadcast radio brought him further stardom and riches, and his populist personality and programming soon allowed him to make the move to Hollywood. In the 1920’s, he was earning $200,000 a year; the movie Song O’ My Heart netted him an impressive half-million dollar paycheck in 1929. McCormack became a US citizen during the First World War, and was a great fundraiser for the war effort. One of the most generous talents of his or any artistic era, he was bestowed three papal knighthoods and the title of Papal Count.